The photo exhibition “On Mountain Trails from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego” by Olaf Sööt opens at the Estonian University

There are moments when time turns into light. That light lingers in images—preserving the brilliance and harshness of mountains, the silence of misty mornings, the breath of high altitudes, and the inner peace of journeys. Olaf Sööt’s photographs do not merely depict places; they convey presence—being there, where the world feels broader and a person stands in more direct communion with oneself.

This exhibition is not only about mountains. It speaks of movement through time and space, of quiet and persistent journeys, of encounters with nature’s primal power and human resilience. Each frame carries an experience that cannot be staged—moments born on the road, step by step, in the highlands and wilderness.

Olaf Sööt (b. 1930) is an engineer whose precision and dedication are interwoven with the sensitivity of a traveller and nature photographer. Over the course of decades, together with his wife Gitta and companions Jüri Tindi and Rein Grabbi, he has journeyed to places few ever reach—from the tundras of Alaska and the glaciers of Canada to the peaks of Patagonia and the light of the Andes. These have not been merely journeys traced on a map, but encounters with mountains, people, and oneself.

At the opening of the exhibition, Olaf Sööt’s film "McKinley and Further into Alaska" will also be screened. If possible, Olaf Sööt will take part in the opening via a video link.

The exhibition has previously been shown at the Tallinn Botanic Garden and the Tartu Nature House, where it has been viewed by tens of thousands of people. The reception has been warm and deeply felt. Visitors have highlighted both the visual power of the photographs and their deeper, inner dimension.

The driving force behind bringing the exhibition to Estonia and presenting it here is Ivar Sibul, who wished to share this unique body of work with audiences in Estonia.

“Bringing this exhibition to Estonia has not been just curatorial work for me, but also a personal journey. These images carry something profoundly honest—an experience born of silence and perseverance. Olaf Sööt’s photographs are not merely beautiful landscape images, but views shaped by journeys spanning decades. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter a world that most of us will never reach,” says Ivar Sibul.

After its exhibition at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, the exhibition will no longer travel. When the exhibition concludes, a charity auction of the photographs is planned, with all proceeds to be donated to the Estonian Children’s Foundation in support of children with rare diseases. The initiative is also connected to a personal story—Olaf Sööt’s elder son, Olaf Andrus Sööt, was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in childhood and has lived with the condition for more than half a century.

The exhibition will open on 23 April at 3:00 p.m. at the Library of the Estonian University of Life Sciences (F. R. Kreutzwaldi 1A, Tartu) and will remain open until 18 June.